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A good read

Just finished a good book about the inner workings of the CIA called, "The Reluctant Spy". Written by John Kiriakou, who in 2002 was the head of counterterrorism in Pakistan, was also on the scene when the terrorist, Abu Zubaydah was located and captured in a firefight.

He describes the people and the sometimes disorderly way people are hired. The personalty conflicts are also described, especially between him and his bosses.

He describes the way the media and some congress members interfere in the inner workings, demanding intelligence answers, but interfering with micromanagement.

He is a liberal politically, because his family was from Greece and followed the social democratic party.

He was highly criticized by the media when he was interviewed by ABC and he made statements that waterboarding did occur with ABU and important information was extracted, but he was not present and didn't have any details. The media expanded that to mean John K approved of the torture. They expanded that to mean he approved of torture when he clearly said he was not there.

His view was that "waterboarding was torture, but it was legal and even justified, given the time and context of its use". He refers to the mindset right after 9/11 with Osama and Ayman al-Zawahiri both boasting of more and bigger targets. He also agreed with Obama when he declassified CIA documents and made an executive order that no CIA personnel would be prosecuted for actions driven by the White House and the Justice Department.

He also wrote of his divorces and personal life and I thought he should have left the bickering with his spouses out of print. After all, there are two sides to every story.

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